Around the hotel and Atlantic Beach

Cape Lookout lighthouse replicas are everywhere 'round these parts. It would probably be easier to count yards/signs/billboards not featuring the lighthouse than to count those with. So, naturally, our hotel garden featured a lighthouse replica:

This was on Monday morning. I was taking the kids to the beach so that Andrew could finish packing up without the kids running around the hotel room. The girls really wanted to go boogie boarding again so I let them carry their boards down to the beach knowing full well they'd chicken out. It was, like, sixty degrees—they weren't going to want to get in the water.

We stopped to play some tetherball:

Zoë promptly fell asleep in the front carrier.

Miriam got bopped on the nose with the tetherball so the girls decided to try shuffleboard instead. I have no idea how to play shuffleboard. They made up their own rules.

Miriam got hit with a shuffleboard stick so we decided to try bowling. Seriously—there were so many games to play at this hotel.

And that was just one walkway leading to the beach...there are more games elsewhere on the property. We took a long walk on the beach and had the place all to ourselves, so be prepared for a bunch of pictures:

Miriam basically wanted to take the whole beach home with her. Every little thing she saw was a treasure:

Benjamin loved this "deep" pool that he found. He kept running into it, yelling, "Cannonball! 'Un and 'un!" Un and un being short for 'run and run,' of course.

Here are the kids against the measuring stick. They had a log book so that you could write down how tall you were any given visit and then, in theory, look up during return visits.

These pictures were ones I took on Atlantic Beach on Sunday while I was taking the kids on a walk while Andrew downloaded family pictures onto his computer and started dinner:

Yes, Benjamin's not wearing pants.

This was the closest we got to finding our own complete conch shell:

Zoë fell asleep in the carrier—anything (even sleep) was better than all that wind (she hated the wind):

See how good the kids are at not swimming in the ocean?

Here are a couple of shots of the pool (which we didn't really use) and the playground (which we did):

And this is a shot of the beach from the hotel "yard":

These were our sleeping arrangements in the hotel: Andrew slept with Benjamin, I slept with Zoë, and the girls shared the hide-a-bed in the other room.

Here are some pictures from Friday...

The girls playing in a fort:

Whatever this thing is...the girls both managed to walk into a bar or two while trying to climb around/on/through it:

Rachel climbing a wall (because there wasn't anything else to climb on):

Racing up the climbing net:

Benjamin refused to go over the top (he went back down the way he came up):

I went over the top though:

I'd just finished nursing Zoë to sleep on the hotel porch in one of their classically southern rocking chairs and handed her off to Andrew so I could play with the kids:

The entire playground was all original design and construction (and very much not up to code). This made it incredibly fun, though we all ended up with a couple bruises.

The teeter-totters were the best! I haven't seen an actual teeter-totter in years! I almost suggested to management that they add old tires under the seats to keep kids from hitting the ground too hard (that's what "safety precaution" meant in my day) but then I figured safety wasn't exactly what they were going for here, what with the climbing structures over cement and all:

Here are the kids exploring the physics of fulcrums:

Only Rachel was left in a bathing suit by this time so we voted that she should have to try the swimming pool out. She jumped in and quickly climbed back out screaming, "Cold! Cold! Very, very cold! Cold! Cold! Cold!" So we didn't try the pool again because the ocean was a much more tolerable temperature.



This sign cracked me up (Rule #5, specifically...probably because I'm not a smoker so the first thing I think of when I see the word 'butt' is not a used-up cigarette):

Everything in the yard was painted the same aqua colour—the walls, the picnic tables, the lounge chairs...everything—except for the playground, which was a little more vibrant. It lent a Cold War era feel to the place—falling apart but trying to be cheery. It reminded me of Russian playgrounds. And whenever the kids asked if they could try something dangerous, or something not in line with the obvious original purpose of a piece of play equipment, Andrew would say, "Since we're living in the 1950s, I don't see why not..."

It was a great little place to stay, even if it was a bit run down. I suppose it's hard to be right on the beach and not get a little dilapidated. The ocean's mighty powerful.